Apple

Gear Bits May 17, 2011

Is Intermittent WiFi on iOS 4.3.3 an Issue?

Two things happened on the same day a couple of weeks ago: 1) I bought an iPad 2 and, 2) Apple released a firmware upgrade for iOS. Unfortunately, the latter all but enfeebled the former. Like a good little Apple fangirl, I upgraded to iOS 4.3.3 on both my new iPad 2 and on my original iPad. Within a few hours I noticed a problem: the WiFi kept dropping its signal on both devices. Here’s how it seemed to go: I’m using the WiFi and it suddenly hesitates, ultimately grinding to a halt and up comes that dreaded “no connection”…

News & Features May 7, 2011

Apple & Nuance: A Tale Told on Gear Diary … in June 2010!

If you check the various tech blogs and news feeds today you are likely to find stuff about talks between Apple and Nuance to bring speech recognition to iOS for the iPhone 5. These are all based on a report from TechCrunch and “sources”. In other words, this article is the stuff of rumors… for now. The article recounts Steve Wozniak saying Apple had bought Nuance last November, which was seen as a great idea … but ultimately false and supposedly based on Siri, a company Apple actually DID buy. And yet it goes back even further – because early…

News & Features May 3, 2011

Apple Updates iMac All-In-One With FaceTime HD, Thunderbolt and more

As expected Apple introduced new iMacs this morning. While they look the same they have some nice upgrades under the hood. Among the changes are quad-core processors across the line, graphics that are up to 3x faster, Thunderbolt for super-fast data transfer, and a FaceTime HD camera. The 21.5″ model starts at $1,199.00 with the 27″ starting at $500 more. The upper end of the “ready to ship” models line has a 3.1 GHz Quad-Core and costs $1999.99. If I wasn’t so pleased using my 13″ MacBook Air I would be pretty tempted right now. Must… Resist…

Gear Bits April 26, 2011

Apple is #1 in Global Handset Revenue

While there is a lot of talk about Android and how dominant a force it is in smartphones (hey, I love mine!), there is one thing people sometimes seem to forget: Android isn’t a phone. So while the Android OS is doing very well and some of the handset makers are also doing well, there is one company who makes a single phone on two carriers that is beating all of them – including the former #1 handset maker Nokia! That company is Apple. Here is some of the press release: Apple Inc. overtook Finland’s Nokia Corp. to claim the…

News & Features April 15, 2011

Apple Employees and the Trevor Project Send the Message that “It Gets Better”

This past fall a student at Rutgers University here in New Jersey walked up on a bridge and proceeded to jump off. He had been outed as a homosexual by a cruel prank that put his sharing affection with another male student up on the web. He was humiliated. Things were so bad that he could not see a time when things would be better. He was wrong, they would have been, but his field of vision had become so narrow that all he wanted was to stop the pain in that moment. So he jumped off the bridge. That…

Gear Bits April 1, 2011

First Look at Apple’s New Pen Based Tablet!

With Steve Jobs no longer guiding the helm of day-to-day operations at Apple, it was unclear what would become of the company. Would they manage to continue to produce innovative technologies like the Apple ][ and Macintosh … or would they succumb to producing generic grey-box computers that look like everything else on any given desktop workplace? Well, based on a product introduction held in London (you can see the video for it here), we know that Apple will not give up its industry-leading technology advancement position anytime soon! Here is the product – called ‘Newton’, this device allows you…

Editorials, News & Features March 30, 2011

Adventures in Customer Service- Apple and Spilled Crystal Light Edition

I thought of a number of different titles for this post. One was: “No Use Crying Over Spilled Lemonaide”. Another was “MacBook Airs and Crystal Light Do Not Mix”. Another was “Apple, I’m Sorry for all the Nasty Things I Have Said and Thought” Then there was “I’m an Idiot” Eventually I settled on simply using “Adventures in Customer Service- Apple and Spilled Crystal Light Edition”. Here’s my story. I did not have a good morning. I woke up not feeling particularly great and immediately had a number of phone calls with people who are in the midst of challenging…

News & Features March 27, 2011

iOS 5.0 Release Pushed Back to Fall? Just Proves Apple Still “Thinks Different”

The blogosphere was buzzing yesterday when word came that Apple might hold off on releasing iOS 5.0 until the fall. What does this mean? Why would Apple break such a long tradition that goes all the way to… January 9, 2007. Okay so maybe it is not such a long-standing tradition, but you know what they say: “Do it once it is innovative; Do it twice and it is redundant; Do it a third time and it is a tradition.” By now an annual hardware and OS update is a TRADITION. Why would Apple mess with tradition? But it is…

Editorials March 17, 2011

New Apple iPhone TV Spots – What Do You Think?

Apple has made a name for themselves with creative and often humorous commercials through the years, from the legendary 1984 Mac introduction video through the Think Different campaign through the Pentium-toasting PowerPC commercials through the infamous ‘I’m a Mac …’ spots with John Hodgeman and Justin Long. Now they have launched a series of three new iPhone 4 commercials themed “If you don’t have an iPhone”. Each features a specific iPhone-specific ecosystem that you are missing if you don’t have an iPhone: one touts the App Store, another the iPod and iTunes, and finally iBooks. By the end of the…

Gear Bits March 4, 2011

GD Quickie: With Apple It Is All in the Timing Redux

If we have learned one thing about Apple in recent years, it’s that they don’t do anything by accident. Every move Apple makes is the result of a well thought out, calculated decision. It may be the wrong decision (think the MobileMe launch, iPhone 4 antennagate and a few others), but even those were the result of calculated choices the company made. So when Apple decided that they would launch the iPad2 next Friday at 5 PM we can assume there is some reasoned decision behind it. In a conversation with Elana last night, those reasons became abundantly clear to…

News & Features February 23, 2011

Apple ‘Wins’ Product Placement Award for 2010

Tracking Apple products in shows is somewhat of a hobby for many folks, and we even did a number of ‘Apple on TV’ posts here at Gear Diary. Of course, Apple is just one of many companies that spend heavily to get their products featured prominently in TV shows and movies, and keeping in the spirit of awards season the folks at BrandChannel have compiled their annual ‘Product Placement Awards’ … and not surprisingly Apple has come out on top again. Here are some details from the award: Apple products appeared in ten (or 30%) of the 33 films that…

News & Features February 21, 2011

The Hidden Price of Our Gadget Obsession: Child Labor

One item that came through in Apple’s Supplier report last week was a marked increase in issues with child labor in supplier facilities, particularly in China. The report noted that Apple ” audited 127 facilities and found 91 cases including 31 workers who had been hired prior to reaching the legal age, but were no longer underage or no longer employed at the time of the audit.” Before you get out the Apple-bashing hammer, remember that EVERYONE making devices is using these facilities – Dell, Asus, Acer, HP, even Samsung gets loads of stuff from these plants. This means it…

Editorials February 20, 2011

Steve Jobs Health and Our “Right” to Know

If you take a close look at the site over any given period of time you’ll notice that there are some types of content you see elsewhere that is rare here are Gear Diary. You won’t find a lot of posts having to do with the latest rumor coming from the blogosphere; after all these are simply rumors, and more often than not they end up being false in the end anyway. This is particularly the case with Apple, although I’ll admit that when it’s a day or two before a key press announcement, if the overwhelming consensus is that…

How to Do It Yourself! February 17, 2011

UPDATED: iPhoto More Than Just an Image Browser – It Moonlights As One of Santa’s Elves!

I have an update to the short self-publishing piece I wrote this past December. My first calendars did arrive in time for gift-giving and they were a big hit! I only ordered a handful in the first batch but they were worth the effort and the (slight) shipping charges. In January I put my efforts into creating my first book, which I completed and titled “One.”

eBooks, Editorials February 1, 2011

Tough Call: Is Apple Being Draconian & Greedy … or Is Sony Trying to Pull a Fast One?

If you track technology, you have likely seen the NYTimes article or one of the echo-articles declaring a shift in how Apple operates the app store, citing the rejection of the Sony Reader app and a vague quote from a Sony Rep as evidence. There is a lot of speculation there, but it ultimately comes down to the interpretation of two sections of a single sentence: The company has told some applications developers, including Sony, that they can no longer sell content, like e-books, within their apps, or let customers have access to purchases they have made outside the App…

Editorials January 21, 2011

Tim Cook, AppleInsider and Boundaries

Dan: The conversation started early this morning when I read a post over on Apple Insider that just didn’t sit well with me. Apple Insider calls Tim Cook the most powerful gay man in Silicon Valley I wrote to the other editors This just offends me. Do we get articles that begin… “Most powerful heterosexual but currently celibate after his third nasty divorce” or “Most powerful 37 year-old virgin although we have no doubt she is straight”. ??? Who cares if he is straight or gay when it comes to running Apple… and who’s business is it anyhow? Judie: I…

News & Features January 20, 2011

The Ethics of Steve Jobs’ Medical Leave

By now you’ve probably seen every blog post out there about Steve Jobs and his medical leave. It’s been a complicated situation since being CEO brings with it obligations that a private individual doesn’t have. On the other hand, Steve Jobs is a private man and deserves the chance to hopefully recover in peace. We could debate this all day, but Businessweek’s resident ethics expert has stepped into the fray with a fantastic and clearly outlined explanation of both sets of obligations (that of a private individual as well as that of the leader of a major corporation who answers…

News & Features January 12, 2011

Rumor: iOS 4.3 to Solve ‘Rotation Lock-Gate’?

About six weeks ago we had a GearChat on ‘Rotation LockGate’, which discussed the change Apple made in the behavior of the side switch from rotation lock to mute switch. I voiced my displeasure about the lack of ANY communication from Apple, and also the inefficiency of the ‘work-around’, saying: As for the difference in action, there are *FOUR* extra steps now: before you slid a switch and were done. Now: double tap home, slide at least one time to the left, tap the unlabeled orientation icon, and then click home again to get back to what you were doing….

News & Features January 6, 2011

Mac App Store Now Live With >1,000 Apps, Requires OS X 10.6.6 Update

This morning I got a couple of emails from Apple, but the one that immediately grabbed my attention was “The Mac App Store. Grand opening today.” There isn’t much to tell as of yet – there are over 1,000 apps loaded up and ready to go, and the process of checking everything out is as simple as using the iTunes App Store! I haven’t bought anything yet, as I took care of iLife, MS Office and MobileMe before the holidays. One thing to note: as stated in the press release below, to get the App Store you need to grab…

News & Features January 2, 2011

Gear Diary 2010 Gear of the Year and Predictions for 2011

The past year has seen interesting developments in the gear we all use: the term iOS replaced iPhone OS as the OS that started on iPhone was also on the new iPad when it took the world and Gear Diary writers by storm, Android phones blossomed and became real competitors to the iPhone, and the iPad got its first real competition in the Samsung Galaxy Tab just a few months before 2010 drew to a close. While there’s much more that happened in the past year, I thought let’s ask the following questions of the Gear Diary Team. 1. What was your…

News & Features November 28, 2010

Gear Chat: Rotation LockGate. Seriously??

The other morning I read a post by Warner Crocker about his being upset over the change in the iPad’s screen rotation control between the original version of iOS on the device and the new version 4.2.1. Warner referred to it as a “boneheaded move”, and he went on to write this: Where Apple got stupid is in changing the screen rotation control from the hardware switch on the device’s side to one that is now only accessible from the multi-tasking dock. I use my iPad mostly in portrait mode but there are some Apps that work better in landscape…

« 1 … 14 15 16 17 18 19 »